


Time and Tide Flow Wide

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Mermaid Stories, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7778065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d left a message on her answering machine last night asking if she’d be able to meet at 6:30 this morning, there was something she should see before the sun comes up, she wouldn’t believe it, Scully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time and Tide Flow Wide

He climbs into the passenger seat of her car with two identical cups of coffee. One he keeps for himself, and the other he hands to her, thick white paper with a curious green logo that is instantly reminiscent of something familiar.

“Since you bought the other morning,” Mulder says, and raises an identical cup in an early morning toast. 

Blearily, Scully looks again at the image, then at Mulder, and back again. Finally, her eyes come to rest on the name that runs up the side of the cup. Starbucks. Surely he can’t know the significance the name holds for her, but she can’t help the grin that spreads across her face. 

“What?” he asks.

She shakes her head, tosses her hair out of her eyes. She’s been thinking lately of cutting it, a sleek bob she’d seen on a magazine at a bodega last week. “It’s the two-tailed mermaid,” she says finally. “The siren. Wrecker of ships, temptress of sailors.”

He smirks and pulls a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “We’ll make a believer out of you yet, Scully.” 

She glares and lets out a huff, her breath visible in the early springtime chill. “It’s a tale as old as time, Mulder, I’m just surprised to see it on a coffee cup. I should have known you’d find some niche coffee shop aligned with your... unique views.”

Mulder takes a sip and recoils as he burns his tongue. He shakes his head. “No, it’s a chain out of Seattle. First one here opened a few months ago.”

“Huh.” She takes a careful sip and shrugs. “I give it six months.”

He smirks, more at ease than she’s seen him in weeks. In the short time she’s known him, she’s found Mulder to be practically nocturnal, most creative and alert in the early morning when she and the rest of the civilized world usually have the decency to be in bed. He’d left a message on her answering machine last night asking if she’d be able to meet at 6:30 this morning, there was something she should see before the sun comes up, she wouldn’t believe it, Scully. 

“Come on,” he teases, “you’re telling me that in all his time at sea, your dad never saw--”

She looks down into her lap so she doesn’t have to see his face fall as he realizes his misstep. She holds up a hand against his honest but mumbled apology. They haven’t talked about her father since they returned from North Carolina three months ago. It’s not that she minds, their cramped subterranean office just isn’t big enough for two dead family members and, well, he was here first. 

Mulder gently directs her down a narrow street and she turns, her headlights casting shadows against the uneven bricks in the predawn light. 

“My father told me this story once,” she says after a moment, smiling, “about a night on the Pacific.” 

“Scully, have you been sitting on a mermaid story all this time?” he asks, his eyes wide with boyish wonder. He is too much sometimes. He makes her a little dizzy.

“Not exactly,” she clarifies. At his word she turns down an alley and parks. Up ahead, she can barely make out the Potomac glimmering under the last of the streetlights. After a moment she begins. 

“The lieutenant on watch with my father said he saw a woman in the water one night. Long red hair, pink lips, full breasts, you get the idea. When he called my father over to look, all he saw was a dolphin. But the lieutenant swore he saw a woman, a... mermaid.”

Mulder raises his eyebrows. “What part of the Pacific was he in?”

“That’s not the point,” she sighs. “The point is that his lieutenant was driven mad by the thought of this fabricated woman. Requested watches three and four nights in a row, stopped sleeping, stopped eating. Weeks of this, until one day he threw himself overboard. Abandoned ship.”

“The siren claims another victim,” Mulder says ominously, taking a cautious sip of his coffee. 

Scully nods. Ahead of them, the sun glows red on the horizon. “And then--I could never tell if he was kidding or not--but to hear my father tell it, he saw something in the water the night the lieutenant went overboard.”

Mulder looks incredulous. “A maiden with long red hair?”

Scully smirks. “Who’s to say?”

“Who indeed.” Mulder holds his cup aloft and says, “To Starbucks.”

They toast. “What did you bring me out here to look at?” she asks finally. 

Mulder unbuckles his seatbelt and leans forward in the seat, his shock of hair nearly touching the roof. “On the first day of spring at sunrise, the light is supposed to hit the wall of this building--” He points to the brick facade on their right. “--and illuminate a message carved nearly two hundred years ago.”

Scully blinks slowly. “We’re out here investigating an urban legend? Mulder--”

He puts a hand on her shoulder, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “Look,” he whispers reverently. 

Orange and red beams of sun break over the hood of the car as the sun ascends toward its zenith, making Scully squint. She pulls down her sun visor. Beside her, Mulder turns to the right, searching the revolutionary-era brick wall for the message he seeks. His eyes scan left to right, right to left, and then suddenly he leaps from the car, letting in a rush of crisp morning air. 

“Mulder!”

Scully is quick on his heels, shouting his name as he pulls down the ladder to climb the fire escape, clearly added onto the building in the last century. Mulder’s long legs take the rungs two at a time, and for a moment she feels like a little girl again, chasing after her big brother on the playground, trying to keep up. He stops abruptly on the third tier, and she crashes into him as she arrives behind him. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles, but he is already palming the wall, his long fingers searching the bumps and ridges of the brick for a hidden message. “What is this--message supposed to say exactly?” she asks in between gulps of air. 

“Coordinates,” Mulder explains, miraculously unfazed by his jaunt up the stairs. “The location of one of the earliest recorded extraterrestrial encounters in the thirteen original colonies.”

Scully scoffs. “I don’t believe this.” 

They stand there for a tense three minutes, the sun moving slowly across the wall, until Mulder admits defeat and halfheartedly kicks at the brick, making the fire escape shake beneath them. Somewhere a seagull caws. 

Suddenly, something catches her eye. “What’s that?” She points at a brick just above Mulder’s head.

Mulder turns, full of hope, but his face stiffens when they both realize what the message says: Cathy and Dave 6/22/89. Scully stuffs her hands in her pockets. “Sorry,” she hears herself say. She doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. 

“Well,” Mulder says, his mouth a grim line, “at least we got to hear your mermaid story.”

Scully realizes suddenly how closely they are standing on the fire escape and finds that she does not mind. She does not mind that she had to get up early on the shortest day of the year after having already lost an hour. She does not mind that they will have to fight traffic to get back across town in time for a meeting with Skinner. She doesn’t mind that she works in the basement or that people call her partner Spooky. 

She doesn’t mind at all.


End file.
